Monday, March 20, 2017

FUCKTARDS FIGHTING FUCKTARDS, HOPEFULLY TO THE DEATH

Inside the White House, they are
dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”

Outspoken, worldly and polished,
this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential
advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around Trump.

Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell —
two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter
and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets
of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing
colleagues.

On the other side are the Republican
populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by
chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff
Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.

As Trump’s administration enters its
third month, the constant jockeying and backbiting among senior staff is
further inflaming tensions at a time when the White House is struggling on
numerous fronts — from the endangered health-care bill to the controversial
budget to the hundreds of top jobs still vacant throughout the government.

The emerging turf war has led to
fights over White House protocol and access to Trump, backstabbing and leaks to
reporters, and a heated Oval Office showdown over trade refereed by Trump
himself.

This account of the internal
workings of Trump’s team is based on interviews with 18 top White House
officials, confidants of Trump and other senior Republicans with knowledge of
the relationships, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.

For the most part so far, the
ideologues are winning. One revealing episode came as Trump weighed where he
would travel this past Wednesday following an auto industry event in Michigan.

Would he jet to New York at the
invitation of Canada’s progressive hero, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to
attend a Broadway performance of “Come From Away,” a musical
that showcases the generosity of foreigners?

Or would he fly to Nashville to dip
his head in reverence at the gravesite of Andrew Jackson and yoke himself to
the nationalist legacy of America’s seventh president?

Some of his New York-linked aides
urged him to go to the play with Trudeau and Ivanka Trump, according to four
senior Trump advisers. But Trump opted instead to follow his gut and heed
Bannon’s counsel.

“Absolutely not,” Trump said later
of going to the play, according to one of the advisers.

Instead, Trump journeyed to Tennessee,
where he laid a wreath at Jackson’s tomb to celebrate what would have been the
former president’s 250th birthday and delivered a fiery speech.

Trump aides pointed to his
deliberation over what was a banal scheduling matter as an example of the
Bannon-Priebus axis prevailing, as it has on many policy fronts — from national
security to the budget to climate.

“Trump’s intention is to be Trump,”
said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal adviser to Trump. “Being
tough on trade. Recentering the country on American nationalism. Taking on
illegal immigration. Strengthening our military. Decentralizing the system.
Radical reduction in regulations.”

He added, “It would be interesting
to see to what degree the New York liberals change Trump and to what degree
Trump changes the New York liberals.”

An unexpected political marriage has
formed between Bannon, with his network of anti-establishment conservative
populists, and Priebus, who represents a wing of more traditional Republican
operatives.

They are often at odds with the New
Yorkers, led by Cohn and Powell, who are close to Ivanka Trump and her husband,
Jared Kushner, arguably the most powerful White House aide.

The lines can be blurred. Kushner
and Cohn are particularly close with the Cabinet’s industry barons — Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson — as well as Chris Liddell and Reed Cordish, two businessmen
recruited by Kushner to work on long-term projects. Bannon and Priebus have
their own relationships with those figures.

Still, many people inside and
outside the White House frequently note the growing visibility of Cohn and
Powell and wonder if they might eventually gain influence over Trump’s message
and moderate it from Bannon-style populism, especially if Trump’s popularity
wanes further.

“They’re more involved than ever,”
Larry Kudlow, a Trump ally and longtime CNBC economic analyst, said of the
group. “Trump is instinctively drawn to them, but that doesn’t mean he’s losing
his populist message. It means that in terms of day-to-day business and
grinding out policy changes, he’s drawn to the business people that are around
him.”

Tensions between Bannon and Priebus
ran hot in the early days of the presidency, suggesting that their
outsider-vs.-establishment feud would be the central division. But Priebus
forged an alliance with Bannon, which they see as mutually beneficial because
either or both could be sidelined if others, such as Cohn or Powell, ascend
further, according to three White House officials.

The tug at Trump forces near-daily
decisions between following his tendency to gravitate toward those he considers
highly successful in business and maintaining the combative political persona
cheered by many conservatives.

Internal competition has been a
mainstay of every Trump enterprise. One top Trump adviser posited that, on a
scale of one to 10, fighting between former aides Corey Lewandowski and Paul
Manafort during the campaign would score an eight, while that between the Cohn
and Bannon blocs at the White House would be a two.

The ongoing tension is real, this
adviser said, but so far not debilitating: “We chose to hire a lot of alphas.
People in politics are insecure and will either adapt to the fact that this is
an entrepreneurial White House and survive, or they won’t. The cream will rise
and the [expletive] will sink.”

Sometimes when staffers feud,
Kushner summons them to his office, a few doors down from the Trump’s, where
the 36-year-old adviser sits them on the couch and mediates as though he were a
couple’s therapist, officials said.

Priebus said there were benefits to
a staff with diverse viewpoints and backgrounds.

“We have an incredible team that is
talented, unified and focused on advancing the Trump’s bold agenda,” Priebus
said in a statement. “The greatness of this team comes from the unique
strengths each member brings to this administration.”

By most appearances, the New Yorkers
are accumulating more power. Trump expanded Powell’s portfolio
this past week, naming her deputy national security adviser for strategy in
addition to her post as senior counselor for economic initiatives.

Born in Egypt and fluent in Arabic,
Powell is taking on a more visible role in foreign affairs. At Friday’s
bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Powell sat two seats
from Trump, with only Vice President Pence between them.

Powell has tapped the network she
cultivated as a George W. Bush administration official and as president of Goldman’s
philanthropic foundation to invite guests for meetings with Trump. She
dominated one such gathering on human trafficking, conversing with the
authority of an expert, which impressed Trump, aides said.

Cohn, meanwhile, influences a wide
range of policies domestic and foreign as director of the National Economic
Council. Colleagues say he is opinionated and sharp-elbowed, walking between
offices with the swagger befitting a banking titan. He is seen internally as a
contender for chief of staff should Priebus exit, though one senior official
noted, “Nobody wants Reince’s job here. I can tell you that with certainty.”

Cohn and Powell huddle regularly
with business executives, both on the White House campus and at glitzy off-site
events. Several other senior staffers have groused that they are rarely invited
to attend — and often don’t know about the meetings. Their networking creates
what one associate called “a positive feedback loop”: The executives often sing
Cohn and Powell’s praises in their meetings with Trump.

“You all know Gary from Goldman,”
Trump said. “Gary Cohn — and we’re really happy — just paid $200 million in tax
in order to take this job, by the way.”

The executives from such behemoths
as General Electric and Johnson & Johnson laughed.

Cohn is a registered Democrat,
though he is known by many Republicans through his work at Goldman or summer
parties in the Hamptons.

Trump enjoys having the rich and
powerful reporting to him, irrespective of their political affiliations, his
associates said. This may be one of the reasons he reached out to Jonathan D.
Gray, who manages a $100 billion-plus portfolio as global head of real estate
at Blackstone Group, to discuss the job of treasury secretary, even though Gray
was a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

John Catsimatidis, a billionaire New
York grocery magnate who has known Trump for decades, explained his friend’s
thinking by quoting a Frank Sinatra song.

“I don’t want to blow my own horn,
but remember the song, ‘If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere … New
York, New York!’ ” Catsimatidis asked. “It takes a little bit extra to make
it in New York than anyplace else. Trump gets that.”

Impressing Trump, however, has not
necessarily translated into policy gains. The conservative wing — Bannon,
Priebus, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and others — have notched
victories in almost every sector, despite meetings Cohn and Powell have
convened to promote a more centrist, business-friendly approach.

“Trump receives many different
inputs, insights and ideas from a very diverse team of advisers, but it is
clear to all that he is the ultimate decision-maker,” said Kellyanne Conway,
White House counselor. “He’s Trump.”

Rather than embracing the Paris
climate agreement, Trump has signaled his intent to roll back fuel economy
standards and proposed a budget last week that would effectively gut the
Environmental Protection Agency. The health-care bill he backs strips federal
funding for Planned Parenthood, while the proposed budget curbs funding for the
arts and sciences. And he is pursuing aggressive policies on immigration.

“Show me one New York win,” a senior
White House official said tauntingly.

Said another official: “Donald Trump
is not the mayor of New York. Some of their ideas just don’t have a national
constituency.”

A competition over Trump’s trade and
economic agenda is brewing between Cohn and Peter Navarro, an eccentric
academic and former campaign adviser close to Bannon who directs the National
Trade Council. It came to a head two weeks ago in the Oval Office, where Cohn
shrugged off Navarro’s ideas as almost irrelevant, according to two officials.
Trump stepped into the conversation and defended Navarro and his point of view.

Priebus has been frustrated with
Cohn and Powell for what he sees as short-circuiting his process by
communicating directly with Trump on a range of matters, officials said.

Meanwhile, Cohn, Powell and other
aides have chafed at Priebus’s protocols because he and Deputy Chief of Staff
Katie Walsh tried to exert complete control over Trump’s daily schedule. “A bottleneck” is how one White
House adviser described it.

After being pressured to let up,
this adviser said, Priebus recently started giving other senior staffers and
Cabinet members more influence over which individuals and groups get face time
with Trump.

“Trump wants W’s — he wants wins,” Kudlow said.
“That’s key to understanding this bit of change in the whole outlook. He’s
trying to get W’s and have Congress work with him, and he’s looking to lots of
people to get them.”